Blogging with hypotheses – a short tutorial

As https://intersex.hypotheses.org has recently attracted a number of non-German contributors, and hopefully will continue to atract more, a short guide to blogging with hypotheses.org may be of some use. The following tutorial is meant for those who have no experience with blogging and will tell you how to write an article/blogpost complete with hyperlinks and pictures here at https://intersex.hypotheses.org.

Invitation and login

Before you can login to the backend (where all the magic blogging happens), get in touch with me so I can set up an account for you. You will receive an invitation email. This email, which is automatically generated and may be in French or German, contains a link which you have to confirm shortly after receiving the email; otherwise, it expires.

Invitation email (language may vary)

Once this is done, you simply login at https://intersex.hypotheses.org/wp-login.php (or click ‚Login‘ at the top bar of the blog’s homepage). The backend presents you with a simply word processor-like interface, and a menu to the left which contains a few additional options, including ‚Profile‘. Here, you can change your password and your ‚Öffentlicher Name‘ (‚public name‘) which appears in all your contributions (blogposts, comments). Note that unlike your ‚public name‘, your user name cannot be changed. The user name (which you mainly need to log in) is not normally visible. My own user name, for example, is ‚intersexe‘, but unless you use the RSS feed you hardly have a chance to see this name, as my public name is ‚Christof Rolker‘. But that’s already more than you might want to learn in this tutorial.

Text

What you really need is the menu ‚Beiträge‘ / ‚Erstellen‘ (‚Post‘ / ‚Add post‘). It really looks like a simple word processor, and if you happen to use Word or Open Office, it will feel very familiar. The ususal shortcuts work (ctrl+c, ctrl+v and so on). The menu is simple, layout options are limited, and I personally recommend to keep the layout indeed simple. The blog is read by people using different devices with difference screens (anything from 5″ mobile phones to desktop PC) and different operating systems, the more complex the layout is the more likely is it that something looks odd for at least some users.

If you like, you can use Word or the like to write text and than copy&paste it; actually I recommend this if you want to write a blogpost with footnotes. Simply insert footnotes when writing the text,once you insert the text in the backend, the footnotes will reappear in slightly different form (for an example, see https://intersex.hypotheses.org/2012).

If you want to know what the blogpost will look like, use the ‚Vorschau‘ (‚Preview‘) button in the upper right corner of the backend. In practice, much will depend on the device used by the reader, but nonetheless the preview can be helpful.

The right colum also contains the menu ‚Kategorien‘ (categories) and ‚Schlagworte‘ (tags); if you want to, and if you feel comfortable with the German, you can use these menues, but feel free to leave this to me. In the long run, I will probably change the language to English too, but for the time being, categories and tags are German.

Much more importantly, do not forget to hit ‚Speichern‘ (’save‘) every now and then. Feel free to publish the post yourself (‚Veröffentlichen‘), or simply let me know that you are done so I can add tags, insert a pdf version (if you like), and the like.

Links

‚Links einfügen‘ (insert link)

Blogpost may, and often will, contain hyperlinks. The relevant button in the word processor menu in the backend is shown to the right; simply highlight the text, hit the button, and enter the URL. I recommend that you tick ‚Öffne Link in einem neuem Tab‘ so that the link opens in a new tab.

Pictures

To add media files, click „Dateien hinzufügen“

The button „Dateien hinzufügen“ (‚add files‘) allows you to upload (‚hochladen‘) all sorts of files including pictures. Once uploaded, the pictures can be inserted in any blogpost (‚In den Beitrag einfügen‘).

Clicking on the pen symbol will give you a few more options.

Once inserted, simply click on the picture to open a very simple context menu; clicking on the pen symbol will give you a few more options, namely adding a title (‚Bildunterschrift‘). Please provide the source of the image here. In addition to the ususal details, please also state whether the picture is in the public domain or whether a specific licence applies. The blogpost you are reading, for example, is licensed under the Creative Commons licence known by the shorthand CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

In addition to pictures that will appear in the blogpost itself, you can add a preview image; for this, use the ‚Beitragsbild‘ button in the lower right corner of the backend, and choose from the media files (or upload another picture). This image will appear at the start page https://intersex.hypotheses.org/ and also, in a cropped version, in the ‚recent posts‘-menu. Personally, I often insert the preview image in the blogpost too, simply to give credits.